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Removing Holocaust Denial Content

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Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reality it's like Comcast. You could theoretically switch ISPs, but realistically and in practice it's a monopoly.

There is effectively zero barrier to switching social networks. "Friends" that could only be accessed through Facebook I realized long ago were people I didn't actually care to talk to.

This is not true for billions of people for whom Facebook is the web. Their businesses run on it, their family only communicate through it, and giving it up would mean disconnecting, essentially, from their entire world.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#182
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you completely blind to the countercultures that have popped up completely unchecked because of social media bans?

Evidence is that when large social media sites ban hateful groups, they re-congregate somewhere else in much smaller numbers. So while the bans don’t eliminate all of them, they are actually fairly effective at turning the temperature down. Consider people like Alex Jones. He’s still making stuff, his hardcore fans still subscribe to his stuff, but he’s lost all of his marginal followers as well as the massive on-ram…

With the rise of more mainstream alternatives to Twitter and Facebook like Parler, I think that affect is going to be minimalized.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#183

Admirable move. I think Facebook (and all its properties), Twitter, and other hyper-connected social networks must show a healthy level of intolerance towards groups and ideologies that are beyond reason and recall, especially when those said groups are overtly and unmistakably intolerant themselves. This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speec…

> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact, one where the tolerant voices aren't drained out by the relentlessness and irrationality of the intolerant. What is tolerance? You can't tolerate something if you agree with it. Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree. This is an encroachment on free…

The really quick and dirty version:

I can't tolerate (neo) Nazis because they want to harm queer people, Jews, disabled people etc. The people they want to harm can't do anything to stop being targeted by (neo) Nazis.

Nazis can stop being Nazis and then I'll start tolerating them.

It doesn't matter if a Jew stops practising Judaism they will be targeted. It doesn't matter if a gay person is in the closet, they will be targeted. If a Nazi stops spreading Nazi rhetoric and performing Nazi actions they will be tolerated.

See the difference?

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#184

“Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.” - From Noam Chomsky's (Chomsky's grandparents are holocaust survivors) on the foreword for "Some Elementary Comments on the Rights of Freedom of Expression" for the book of Frenc…

... and Goebbels and Stalin were both part of the government . Why is so hard to understand that government limitations on free speech are fundamentally different from private ones? Freedom of the press means being able to print what you want, not being able to compel the printer. Facebook doesn't have to be complicit in publishing speech it finds repugnant, and why should it?

The concept of free speech has nothing to do with governments or private institutions. The legal differences between those entities has nothing to do with the general concept.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#185

Admirable move. I think Facebook (and all its properties), Twitter, and other hyper-connected social networks must show a healthy level of intolerance towards groups and ideologies that are beyond reason and recall, especially when those said groups are overtly and unmistakably intolerant themselves. This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speec…

It might interest you to know that Popper only advocated for the right to censorship in the context of democratically established political institutions, as a last resort function of a liberal democracy with a constitutionally established rule of law, which Facebook most definitely is not. Whether or not the current US government is a better steward of censorship power is a separate question, but Popper would straightforwardly disagree with this exercise of power by private parties, imo.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#186

“Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.” - From Noam Chomsky's (Chomsky's grandparents are holocaust survivors) on the foreword for "Some Elementary Comments on the Rights of Freedom of Expression" for the book of Frenc…

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1357/

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact, one where the tolerant voices aren't drained out by the relentlessness and irrationality of the intolerant. What is tolerance? You can't tolerate something if you agree with it. Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree. This is an encroachment on free…

It might be worth considering The Paradox of Tolerance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance > The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant.

The grandparent comment to yours already linked to that.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#188
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact, one where the tolerant voices aren't drained out by the relentlessness and irrationality of the intolerant. What is tolerance? You can't tolerate something if you agree with it. Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree. This is an encroachment on free…

Facebook isn't a collection of books, and it isn't a collection of speech: the speech is a side effect. Facebook is a virality engine. How do you get content that's appealing to the widest variety of people shoved into their faces? The popularity of a President almost always goes up by starting a war, because the American public loves war. It's how Bush Jr. got the popular vote after losing it so miserably the first…

What? Um... no. Facebook is, literally, a collection of speech.

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speech and free society intact, one where the tolerant voices aren't drained out by the relentlessness and irrationality of the intolerant. What is tolerance? You can't tolerate something if you agree with it. Tolerance means putting up with things with which you disagree. This is an encroachment on free…

It might be worth considering The Paradox of Tolerance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance > The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant.

What do you think has been happening for a while now?

Re: Removing Holocaust Denial Content

#190

Admirable move. I think Facebook (and all its properties), Twitter, and other hyper-connected social networks must show a healthy level of intolerance towards groups and ideologies that are beyond reason and recall, especially when those said groups are overtly and unmistakably intolerant themselves. This heavy-handedness isn't an encroachment on free speech but a necessary impediment to keep the spirit of free speec…

I'm fine with censoring holocaust denial content, but I dislike this "Paradox of Tolerance" reasoning. It's too easy for someone to convince themselves that another group is "intolerant" and therefore give themselves moral license to deplatform, harass, or even assault their "intolerant" target. This isn't just a theoretical concern; in practice this is virtually the only context in which I've seen the Paradox applied. Views that are pretty commonplace and understandable are flimsily branded "intolerant" by authoritarians as an excuse to commit their own intolerance. I could get on board with this Paradox of Tolerance reasoning if we had any sort of reasonable if not objective standard for what constitutes 'intolerance', but it seems like >90% of the time it's "someone who disagrees with me".

Not only is it too easily abused, but by resorting too quickly to censorship the compelling, valid arguments against abhorrent points of view are suppressed. If someone is wondering why racial profiling is bad, we should talk about how American society aspires to treat people as individuals and not fungible tokens of their race--any given individual doesn't deserve heightened scrutiny simply because people with similar skin tone are more likely to commit crimes. By not addressing these questions rationally first, a lot of people miss the opportunity to be persuaded--especially when we are outright hateful toward people who ask these kinds of questions--we risk sending them into the welcoming arms of people with unsavory, pseudo-scientific explanations that vindicate profiling (censoring isn't going to stop these people from finding each other). Of course, not everyone is going to be persuaded by rational explanations, but most will be and we shouldn't deprive society of the opportunity to have fewer racists.

Lastly, this quick-to-censor precedent is only good for as long as the "right" people are in charge of determining who is intolerant, and already the people who are the quickest to cite the Paradox of Tolerance are often the people who espouse racist points of view--ideas that society should be segregated (each race should stay in its own lane, no cultural mixing ["appropriation"], no interracial marriage, no-$race-allowed spaces, etc), that some entire races are guilty of crimes against other races, that race tells us all we need to know about a person ("ugh, the teacher is a $race man. What am I going to learn from another $race male?"), etc.

So yeah, I don't have any sympathy for holocaust deniers, but I worry we're gifting these kinds of unsavory groups a weapon to be used against us in these Paradox of Tolerance precedents.

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